Demographics

There have been a number of estimates about the ethnicity and the religious affiliation of the local population. The Ottoman Empire classified and counted its citizens according to religion and not ethnicity, which led to inefficient censuses and lack of classification of populations according to their ethnic groups.[18][19][20][21][22] The vilayet was predominantly inhabited by Albanians and Greeks, while the major religions were Islam and Christian Orthodoxy.[23][24][25] The vilayet was heavily Greek, especially the part that would be later incorporated to Greece.[26][27]According to Aram Andonyan and Zavren Biberyan in 1908 of a total population of 648,000, 315,000 inhabitants were Albanians, most of which were Muslims and Orthodox, although some were adherents of Roman Catholicism.[28]Aromanians and Greeks were about 180,000 and 110,000 respectively.[28] Smaller communities included Bulgarians, TurksRomanis and Jews.[28]According Michail Sakellariou of a total population of 550,000 the Greeks were the most numerous at 300,000, Albanians second at 210,000, and there were also 25,000 Aromanians and 3,000 Jews. The sanjaks of Janina, Preveza and Gjirokastër were predominantly Greek, the sanjak of Igoumenitsa (then Gümeniçe, Reşadiye between 1909-1913 due to honour of Mehmet V, Ottoman Sultan) had a slight majority of Greeks, and that of Berat north was predominantly Albanian.[29][30] According to Sakellariou, the official Ottoman statistics in the Vilayet of Janina had the tendency to favor the Albanian element at the expense of the Greek one.[30]According to Sir Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb in 1895 there were c.224,000 Muslims. The Orthodox population included c.118,000 Greeks and c.129,500 Albanians, and the Jewish population amounted to 3,500 people.[31] According to Zafer Golen 2/3 of the population were Albanian Muslims,[32] while according to Dimitrios Chasiotis c.419,500 of the total population were Greeks.[33]